Secondary Consumer Picketing. Following the Struck Product

The "secondary boycott" section of the Taft-Hartley Act, as amended by Landrum-Griffin, has raised numerous problems with respect to the permissible limits of secondary union activity. Professor Engel analyzes the Supreme Court's Tree Fruits decision, and argues that the Court there failed to establish viable standards for future cases because of its focus upon the nature of the pressure exerted rather than upon the object of the activity. After determining that Congress did not by its 1959 amendments intend to proscribe all secondary boycotts, and that the situs and "ally" doctrines were not impaired by the amendments, the author proposes a new approach to determine the legality of secondary boycotts. This approach, the "primary object" test, would focus initially upon the primary aspects of the union activity to ascertain whether the activity (1) was designed to affect directly the primary employer, (2) was reasonably calculated to succeed without the use of secondary pressure, and (3) included reasonable efforts by the union to minimize the impact of the activity on secondary employers. Although the author would favor new legislation which rejects the means-object scheme presently employed, he urges that the "primary object" test would provide not only a rational basis for such new legislation but also a workable standard of universal applicability under the present statutes.